Symmetry
by TrueVulcanRaven
Summary: The lycanthrope Jon Talbain re-evaluates his motives with the aid of one of Marvel's most famous anti-heroes. Update wasn't working so I had to remove the old copy of "Symmetry" completely. If I get any ideas for further development, I'll post it ASAP.
1. Retribution

Symmetry

A DarkStalkers Fan-Fiction

Written by: TrueVulcanRaven

Legal Info: All DarkStalkers characters are copyright CapCom, Inc. 1994.All Marvel references are copyright Marvel 2003.

Rated: 'PG-13' for violence and language.

'Pursuit'

Nathan Claymore's heart pounded in his chest, threatening to depart his body via his oral cavity despite the unpleasant consequences that would result from the loss of such a vital organ. He was no athlete, and the lactic acid building up in his muscles was starting to take its toll on the thirty-something male. He stooped over a bench on a corner in the central part of London, clutching his belly where a cramp was starting to form. A storm was brewing in the night sky, and the resounding report of thunder told him that rain was soon coming.

"Shit…(puff)…Gotta keep moving," he told himself while he drew out a silenced Glock-20c from his coat pocket. "There!" He fired off three shots at a shadowy image that bounded over the rooftops, none of which met its intended mark. "Damn it…too fast," he muttered as he loped down the street. Incomplete thoughts, suggestions rushed through his head at an impossible rate. "Whadoido? Hide, shelter. Monster! Jesus…. Why did I do it? God help me!"

Claymore collided with the tall, sturdy, wooden doors of St. Paul's Church and hurriedly pushed past them. "Anyone here? Sanctuary…. That thing's gotta be a Dark One. Maybe they can't come in here." He called out a distressed "Hullo!" which echoed across the walls of the building. "No one. Scary dying alone. Christ, I don't wannna die!" The Church's bell tower tolled the hour. "Two A.M.… My grandmother died at two A.M. on a Saturday."

"_Crime and Punishment_. Written during the nineteenth century by a Russian named Fyodor Dostoevsky," a low growl mentioned from the rafters.

"Get away from me!" he screamed and shot blindly at the pitch-black ceiling.

"In it, the main character murders two women, thinking that he will be aiding mankind in his efforts. He imagines himself above the law, believes himself to be an extraordinary individual unbound by the rules of man. Is that how you viewed yourself when you raped that seventeen-year-old girl?"

"That's bullshit! They didn't even come close to convicting me!" he yelled, regaining some of his confidence.

"You were acquitted on a technicality!" The voice was now a feral roar.

"She's just some broad! Why do you even care?" Claymore cried out. He squinted at the roof, hoping to catch a glimpse of his tormentor.

Out of the darkness, a more-or-less humanoid figure dove at the felon, kicking the gun from his hand. "Her name was Sarah (whump) Margaret (crack) Mayfield (thunk)!" After each word one of the phantom's fists shot out and struck Claymore viciously in either his face or his fleshy stomach. "And she had a life before you so callously shattered it!" The figure grabbed him by the lapels and threw him on the altar.

"_What the hell are you?_" Claymore wailed in absolute terror.

"God's mischief or the devil's whim. Take your bloody pick," the being snarled, his golden eyes blazing.

A bolt of lightning flashedthrough the stained glass, giving Claymore just enough visibility to make out the visage of the mysterious vigilante. The felon's countenance warped into a ghastly expression of utter horror, and his blood-curdling scream ripped through the air. The vengeful spirit unsheathed the talons on his right hand and sliced with the precision of a trained assassin, severing a critical blood vessel and tersely silencing him. The man's assailant took a step back to watch as a fountain of crimson jetted from his neck, staining the white cloth that covered the altar. Nathan Claymore seized himself by the throat in a futile effort to slow down the loss of life-sustaining blood, and after a few moments had passed, he lay still. A clap of thunder that could have easily passed for a mortar shell rang out in the night. Jonathan Talbain, his wolfish countenance the embodiment of disgust and contempt, spat on the corpse and stormed out of the church.

'A Kindred Spirit'

"How strange that I chose that analogy," Talbain mused as he ambled down the streets of England in the wee hours. Indeed, why had he decided to relate that gutter trash to a famous literary work? He became consumed in his thoughts, allowing his feet to choose the destination. The storm became more subdued eventually, reducing itself to a slight drizzle. Drops of rain spattered on his brown trench coat, and he sloshed indifferently through puddles of murky water.

"Wait," he spoke aloud. The werewolf stopped in his tracks. Most assuredly, this habit of taking to the streets to ponder things was positively and uncannily similar to the proceedings in the novel he had alluded to in the church. "Rodion Romanovitch, the murderer, did he not also peruse his mind in this sort of fashion while wandering through St. Petersburg?" His immediate reaction to his own inquiry was to brush off the matter as mere coincidence…which satisfied him for the whole of one and a half seconds. "Damn it all, Jon, you're regressing to your old routines of self-doubt and insecurity."

He then saw that his feet had chosen to discontinue its journey in front of the Royal Flush Pub and Grill. Jon made his way inside and took a seat on one of the stools in front of the pub tender. The atmosphere of the establishment stank of cigar smoke and cheap booze. In the corner two men sat at a cracked, dusty table, one busy ingesting a rum concoction and mumbling a single line from a rustic drinking song, the other looking on his companion with bitter scorn. Lamps that were as dingy as they were tacky dimly lit the bar, shedding a sickly, yellow glow over the patrons. The owner of the joint, a corpulent and testy fellow, leaned heavily on the counter, his balding head almost resting on his crossed arms. He scowled, obviously annoyed that Jon appeared to be in no great hurry to invest in his wares.

"I'll have a Bloody Mary," the NightWarrior spoke.

The pub tender grunted an affirmation and turned to procure Jon's request. Approximately five seconds after he had ordered, the entrance to the Royal Flush creaked open, revealing a man in his mid-forties who wore a heavy overcoat. His black, rain-soaked hair hung just barely over his eyes, which were a cold, steely blue. A noticeable shadow covered his chin and cheeks, and his current facial expression gave the impression of, "Fine. You wanna fuck with me? Your funeral." As the newcomer passed by Jon, the NightWarrior saw out of the corner of his eye the insignia on the man's coal-colored body suit: a bone-white skull. He sat down directly to Jon's left and pulled from one of his inner pockets a thick cigar, which he stuck in his mouth, chewed pensively, and lit with a Zippo that he produced from another compartment in his coat. The pub tender performed an about-face and slid a glass to Jon, after which the old man stepped into a back room. As Talbain lifted the glass to his lips, the stranger spoke in a rasping baritone.

"I saw your handiwork back there at St. Paul's. Very professional." He exhaled a puff of smoke.

Jon rested his drink on the countertop and glanced at the man. "I know." He smiled wryly. "I sensed you were tagging along, but that didn't really matter. I was—and am still—certain that my dirty little secret is safe with Franklin 'The Punisher' Castle."

"I see that my reputation precedes me," the anti-hero chuckled. "With a publicist like J. Jonah Jameson singing my praises to the world via the _Daily Bugle_, what can you expect, eh?"

"Hah. If he knew half of what I've heard about you, he'd shit himself at the mention of your name. No, don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about. You were the brains behind that Cartel massacre in Brazil three months ago. Those poor bastards didn't have time to mutter an obscenity before they realized that their 'trusted American consumer' had paid them in suitcases laden with hidden canisters containing VX gas."

"He he he. I'm one crafty sonuvabitch, aren't I?" Castle puffed on his cigar. "How'd you find out that was me?"

"I have my sources."

The Punisher raised his eyebrows fleetingly and shrugged slightly. A few minutes of silence passed between them. "I saw you transform. So, what are you, a mutant?"

"DarkStalker."

"Oh." Another period of speechlessness took hold of them.

"Why are you here?" Jon asked finally. He really couldn't surmise as to what the ex-Marine would want with him.

Frank fiddled with the grip on the custom 1911 Colt .45 that was strapped to his leg. "One of the Kingpin's associates is running a big-time ecstasy ring, and his base of operations is somewhere near here. I'm gonna put a hole in 'im and all his goons for every minor he's hooked."

"Why?"

Castle stared at the lycanthrope incredulously. "Well, Raskolnikov, you tell me."

"That was Rodion Romanovitch's surname," Talbain thought to himself. Then he spoke. "You consider that by your unlawful activities a good of greater magnitude will come about. Therefore, the ends justify the means."

"Bingo," Frank replied, snapping his fingers. "Though you worded it rather mildly, that's the gist of it. People like you and I, we're just taking out the trash. No one's gonna miss the pushers, the rapists, the serial killers, the child pornographers…."

"Do their deeds really merit death?"

"I don't deal in death," Castle stated bluntly. "I deal in punishment, in case you forgot. They only get what they deserve."

"But is what we're doing moral?"

"I stopped worrying about that after I held my wife and kids in my arms and watched them die." He grunted and ground the butt of his cigar into an ashtray. "From then on, this was and is my way of life. That's all there is to it." He stood up and skulked to the exit, leaving Jon to his half-finished beverage.


	2. Confirmation

Symmetry

A DarkStalkers Fan-Fiction

Written by: TrueVulcanRaven

Legal Info: All DarkStalkers characters are copyright CapCom, Inc. 1994.All Marvel references are copyright Marvel 2003.

Rated: 'PG-13' for sexual-related discussion and language.

"Discovery"

Jon slammed a few coins on the counter and walked briskly out of the bar to catch up with Castle. Something wasn't right.

"Frank, hold up!"

The Punisher closed the door of the Battle Van, his armory on wheels, and looked over his shoulder.

"I'm guessing you know something about that Claymore punk that I don't."

"Yeah, I do," Frank admitted. "But you're probably not going to like what I have to say."

"The Visit"

The DarkStalker pondered the significance of the information he had just received as he walked a familiar path through the borough of Lambeth. He glanced down at his watch and after examining the time, he quickened his pace.

_Sarah…_

Unable to stop it, her story played out for what had to have been the hundredth time in his mind. A student at the London Academy for the Blind ever since she was stricken with a rare visual disorder, she had been on a field trip with her classmates at the Interactive Science Museum in Kensington. Somehow she had gotten separated from the group. Twenty minutes later the security detail found her gagged and whimpering in the men's room, the damage already done and the assailant gone. DNA evidence combined with old-fashioned detective work led to an eventual arrest and finally a trial. It was after the obviously-guilty Claymore inexplicably escaped conviction that Jon took matters into his own hands. Knowing what he did now, Talbain didn't regret it.

_Here we are._

He stopped in front of her family's three-story residence. Jon nimbly hopped over the six-foot high fence and crept around to the back of the domicile. After pulling out a wooden stick about a half-inch in diameter from his coat pocket, he removed the outer garment and his shirt. With the stick firmly gripped in his teeth, Talbain summoned the legacy of his tainted blood and fought desperately to keep from making any excess noise. When his transformation was complete, the werewolf leaped up to the windowsill that belonged to her room. He checked the lock.

_Good girl._

Jon gently slid the window up and let himself in. He dropped on all fours and soundlessly padded over to her bedside. With her angelic face and long brown hair, she looked like a life-size doll in her nightgown. The only aspect of her that argued to the contrary was the slow rise and fall of her chest.

"Sarah…wake up," he whispered hoarsely as he ran the back of his paw delicately across her forehead.

"Mmm," she groaned sleepily, blinking her sightless green eyes. "'S that you, Jon?"

"Certainly is, love," he replied. "Sorry I didn't give you any warning this time. I just wanted you to know that he—I mean, it's been taken care of."

She sat up suddenly, her breath caught in her throat. Her shoulders began to shake as she tried to muffle her sobs. Moved with pity, Jon wanted more than anything to console her. The werewolf acted quickly, grabbing a blanket from a nearby shelf and wrapping it around her. He held her in his arms, rocking her back and forth until she lay still.

"Oh, God, what am I thinking?" she spoke up suddenly. "Jon, what are you going to do? The police, they'll-!"

"They have nothing. I covered my tracks."

"But how-?"

"Experience, love. You aren't the first good soul I've helped," he assured her, giving her a mild squeeze. "There's something else I need to tell you, though. The man who assaulted you was the nephew of the head of one of London's most infamous organized crime syndicates, a Powers Rutherford Claymore. His underlings that work in the judiciary system got the bastard off the hook. Out of principle, I'm tempted to take this vendetta to the next level. I wanted to ask what you thought first."

"Jon, these men you're talking about…they're evil, sick people," she spoke after a moment of thought. "I'm fairly certain what happened to me is only one of the many atrocities they've committed. Someone needs to stand up to them. But I only want it to be you if I know you'll come back in one piece."

"Don't worry about me."

"Oh, Jon…."

He opened his mouth to reassure her, but the face on his watch caught his eye.

"Shite, almost 4 a.m. And you've got school tomorrow," he swore as he rose from the bed.

"Wait!" she held out a hand to beckon him back. "Jon, please…before you go, I want to 'see' you."

The werewolf sighed. "We've been over this before."

"Jon, you won't scare me. I beg you, please?"

Her tone made his chest contract painfully on itself. "All right. But I warned you."

She reached out, her hands making contact with his shoulders: warm fur. "Wha-?" She ran her hands slowly up his neck, guiding her fingers smoothly over his face. "Jon, you're-!"

"A beast."

"No!" She remembered colors vaguely from her early childhood. "What shade are you?"

"Azure where it's rough and white wherever it feels soft."

She continued tracing her hands across his visage, careful to avoid his eyes and teeth. "Beautiful," she whispered, her voice filled with awe. She suddenly latched onto him, hugging him tightly around his neck. "Don't you dare let anyone convince you otherwise!"

He returned her embrace. "Thanks, love."

The Dark One paused when he reached her window. "I'll see you again soon."

"Promise?"

"Of course."

"The Pact"

A few blocks away from the Mayfield residence, Talbain withdrew a cellular phone from his pocket and retrieved a number from its memory. After two ring tones, a haggard voice answered.

"Yeah?"

"You're on."

"Hehe. Just you wait. We're gonna have a ball with this one."


End file.
